He waved Armando off with a casual gesture.
“What do you think? Does it look like I need help?”
“No,” Armando replied with a quick reassurance to his tone as he opened the door. “Not at all sir, no.”
After getting in the limo, we rode in silence for about a minute or so. At last, Mr. Sinclair broke the tension.
“Maddie, you okay?” he asked.
A sudden chill laid into me. I started to rub my upper arms in an attempt to warm myself. Noticing this, he reached across the seat and offered me his jacket.
Without thinking, I shook my head. “I’m fine Mr. Sinclair. It’s just a little chill.”
He extended the coat in my direction. “Maddie, I insist.”
I smiled and took it from him. Grabbing it by the lapels, I spun it around and draped it across my shoulders.
“Better?” he asked.
“Much, thank you.”
“Good,” he said, as he leaned back in the seat. “Oh and Maddie?”
“Yes?”
“Call me Greyson…”
MADDIE
“I’m fine,” he said.
Deftly, he undid his cufflinks with a few twists of his wrists and exposed the deep musculature of his forearms. Though lean, it was plain they possessed immense strength judging by the way he tossed a man nearly twice his size on the ground with them not ten minutes earlier. Once he’d finished, Greyson turned his head to one side and with an easy tug, undid his Windsor knot and the first two buttons of his dress shirt at once.
“Aaandd… what about you, Maddie? Are you warming up?”
As he finished speaking, Greyson leaned back and spread his arms so they spanned the entire width of the back seat of the car. In spite of what happened, he appeared none the worse for wear.
A gentle smile crept to my lips. “Yes, thank you, I am.”
Greyson kept his eyes focused on me as I spoke. Hardly a hair seemed out of place on his head as I reached down and tugged at the corners of the expensive fabric of his suit jacket. The silk lining inside felt smooth and a bit cool against my skin. As I looked at him, it was hard not to notice, well, his hard body. The crisp white of his shirt hugged against the perfect V-taper of his torso. At that instant I felt a deep sense of gratitude towards his jacket as it concealed the beginnings of my body’s war with my mind. Hard as crystals, my nipples pressed the sheer fabric of my dress, sending a streak of heat down the midline of my torso straight to my…
Okay Maddie. That’s enough. Jesus.
I blinked myself back to some state of rational behavior. If Greyson noticed my suffering, he seemed content for now not to make mention of it or acknowledge it in any way. Instead, he cast a casual glance out the window. Just beyond it, soft orange streaks from streetlights passed by us like curious, urban ghosts.
He spoke without looking back in my direction.
“You realize, of course, now that I’ve gone out of my way to protect you, you’ll need to be my escort for the remainder of my trip. And when we get back to my hotel, you'll be expected to begin your service by accompanying me to my room.”
My eyes widened as he finished his thought. Every square inch of my flesh tingled at the thought of his strong hands digging into my arms as he pinned me beneath him. Was he serious and if so, about what part of it? Silence followed his statement and left me to fill the void with interpretation of his intent rather than confirmation of it. At last, the pressure grew too heavy for me to bear. My lips parted in an attempt to form a sentence, speak a single word, hell, I'd settle for a grunt.
Which was, to my horror, exactly what I did.
God help me I grunted at the man.
I know it was a grunt because no sooner had I done it than his head moved on a slow swivel back towards me. His features formed an expression of amusement and surprise. Greyson’s eyebrows drew together in a mask of delight as his eyes fixed on mine.
“Come again?” he said with rising tone.
My entire being wanted to vanish, slip between the cracks of the car seats like forgotten pocket change. My heart stopped mid-beat as I searched for something, anything, to say in response. I tugged hard at his jacket once again, pulling it taut as a corset across my upper body.
Feigning a cough, I sputtered a lie.
“Sorry, my throat’s dry. I had a little cough there.”
Whether Greyson was content with my answer or not, he didn’t reveal it with a response and I was so mortified I looked away almost as soon as I spoke. There was a good reason I was such an awful poker player, after all. I had the sense that when it came to games of innuendo, he possessed far more skill than I. Just then, merciful providence intervened as the limo pulled into the hotel parking lot. As it did, I loosened my death grip on his jacket, slipped it off my shoulders and started to pass it back to him.